A rchive Date
[ 03-12-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Science & Technology ]
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[Chances are, somebody's watching you
By M.J. Zuckerman, USA TODAY
11/30/00- Updated 12:37 PM ET
ARLINGTON, Va. - A short walk from Arlington National Cemetery, up a hill from the Pentagon, there is an inconspicuous two-story brick building in which a group of technicians monitors the activities of millions of Americans over closed-circuit television. This is neither a super-secret spy network nor an Orwellian mind-control project. This is the domain of Carlene McWhirt, a supervisor with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, accustomed to "Big Sister" jibes from co-workers. She and a team of technicians observe and control the flow of traffic along nearly 100 miles of the interstates linking Washington, D.C., to its booming suburbs.
This $40 million surveillance center - a state-of-the-art advancement over similar systems in Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles - controls 110 remote-control cameras, more than one every mile, nearly all able to zoom in close enough to read a license plate - or to peer inside a vehicle. The Virginia Smart Traffic Center, like many other double-edged advances in technology, reinforces the notion that privacy today is fluid and rapidly evaporates once we step out our front doors.
Whether as motorists or pedestrians; as visitors to convenience stores, banks, ATM machines or the post office; as shoppers with credit cards or telephone users; even at leisure, in parks, playgrounds and golf courses, we're constantly on candid camera. Full-time surveillance is a reality of modern life.
In northern Virginia, McWhirt and her staff can quickly summon help, alert local radio and TV, post warnings on electronic signs and divert traffic. Their goal: "Spot an incident, dispatch help, and be on the scene in under five minutes, to provide assistance and keep traffic moving," she says.
But if improperly used - and McWhirt enforces strict discipline - that equipment could easily see into the homes and offices along the interstates.
"We need a modern-day Paul Revere riding from city to city warning people: 'The cameras are coming! The cameras are coming!' " says Norman Siegel of the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In an effort to raise public awareness, Siegel's office conducted a block-by-block inspection of Manhattan. Volunteers identified 2,397 surveillance cameras in use. And that was two years ago.
No one accuses the Virginia Smart Traffic Center of abuse. McWhirt and her employees don't identify motorists. Their gaze doesn't stray from the roads or into the homes and offices within range of the cameras' long lenses. And while the cameras from time to time spot a motorist at the side of the highway answering nature's call, system operators are under strict orders to avert their stare.
Maryland's eye on I-95
But just a few miles up I-95, Maryland authorities recently weathered criticism for what some residents regarded as an abuse of their privacy. On Sept. 27, officials identified 26,500 Maryland motorists using I-95, and then sent those people letters asking where they were going that day, why and with whom as part of a mass transit survey.
"We were trying to determine demographic information to determine the number of stops" needed along a new high-speed rail line between Washington and Baltimore, says Frank Fulton of the Maryland Mass Transit Administration. "We didn't want to collect any personal or private information."
But that wasn't the perception.
"Quite a few motorists thought Maryland crossed the line" by identifying them, says Mantill Williams of the American Automobile Association. "There is a broad constitutional right for motorists to lawfully travel across the United States without police or governmental interference. I suppose the question becomes, 'What do you consider interference?' "
Your expectations of privacy "depend on where you are in public, on your own property or someone else's," says law professor Michael Froomkin of Miami University in Florida. Generally:
 There's little "reasonable expectation of privacy" in public places. Anything that can be seen is fair game. A couple kissing in a park can be photographed without permission.
 If you're on someone else's property, your expectation of privacy is determined by them, except for limited superseding state laws. A homeowner may photograph a couple at a party kissing in the living room, but not in the bathroom.
 The strongest "reasonable expectation of privacy" is inside your home with the curtains drawn. Courts also have generally held that you have a high expectation of privacy in public bathrooms and dressing rooms, during phone conversations or when sending e-mail.
However, voice mail and computer files may be monitored.
Nearly 75% of major U.S. firms in an April survey said they record and review employees' activities, including e-mail, Web connections, phone calls and computer files. "Part of the problem is that abuse does not flow from the misuse of specific information," says Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU. "It's the loss of dignity and autonomy from being constantly placed under surveillance."
A town under surveillance
It's not just major metropolitan areas, with their traffic woes and perception of crime, that are investing in public surveillance. Nevada, Mo., a town of 9,000, now employs surveillance technology to assure discipline, safety and efficiency, says Carol Branham, the parks and recreation director.
Ten surveillance cameras already operate in Nevada (pronounced Neh-VAY-duh). A Web camera is soon to be added to a secluded section of parkland, and additional surveillance technology is coming next year. The long-range plan, Branham says, is to cover the golf course and other public areas - while avoiding public locker rooms or bathrooms.
For now, most of the cameras are in use at the town's 14,000-square-foot community center, where they minimize the need for security staff. "Even though we are a small town, we recognize that we face some of the same problems as big cities," she says.
And when an after-school "who-hit-who-first" dispute erupts on the basketball court or petty vandalism is committed in the activity room, the culprit "finds it hard to deny it when we play back the tape," Branham says. "The few times we've had to use it, it's proved a very positive tool."
Though there have been no concerns voiced over the cameras, she says, she agrees with those who say it would be worthwhile to put up warning signs and establish some limit on how long the videotape is retained.
The battle over public surveillance has grown shrill in Britain, where an effort to control hooliganism at soccer matches 15 years ago has grown into what critics call a "surveillance canopy": 1.5 million cameras operated by the government and the private sector.
"The 1998 Data Protection Act sets conditions that there must be notification" posted in surveillance areas, says activist Simon Davies of Privacy International. "But with 1.5 million cameras about, the signs would be a public nuisance. So there's a general acceptance that wherever you go, you will have cameras pointed at you."
The Data Protection Act also sets limits on how long a surveillance tape may be kept and allows citizens access to any image made of them. In the USA, there are no national regulations on public surveillance, though a few localities have placed limits on public surveillance.
"We don't seem to care about privacy until it's too late, and then we want to have it back," says Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington.
The British experience should have captured Americans' attention, says Simson Garfinkel , author of Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century. Garfinkel notes that the British government's expenditure of more than $1.5 billion in the past decade on surveillance has created a powerful industry. "They have large commercial interests there selling fear, (making it) difficult to shut them down."
With some technical ingenuity, authorities today can easily reconstruct large portions of an individual's life using cameras and other equipment at banks and office buildings, on street corners and highways, in parking garages, subways and buses.
For example, video surveillance at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., helped authorities determine that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold acted alone in their 1999 killing rampage in which 13 died. And in the Oklahoma City bombing case, a McDonald's security camera provided evidence that linked Timothy McVeigh with the truck carrying the bomb.
Police rarely ask
Those are exceptional circumstances. The ACLU and the Justice Department both say it is rare for authorities to use surveillance so extensively.
While the American Management Association estimates that the private sector operates more than 1 million closed-circuit TV systems, police agencies rarely ask to review those tapes.
"On some occasions, law enforcement has come to us and asked what area our (ATM) camera covers, and if they are interested, they come back with a subpoena," says Boris Melnikoff, the American Bankers Association special adviser on security. "We provide them only the frames that are germane ."
One such case involved the May 1997 murder of Jonathan Levin, the 31-year-old son of Time Warner chief executive officer Gerald Levin. Upon learning someone had used Jonathan Levin's ATM card days after the murder, authorities obtained the videotape from a mid-Manhattan ATM. But the tape had been reused so many times that the image was too obscured.
The ACLU's Siegel, who happens to live near the Manhattan bank, says he was appalled such a crucial piece of evidence was unavailable.
That might seem an odd position for someone who is generally associated with challenging law enforcement requests. But he argues that surveillance has its place, and if there's going to be surveillance, standards are needed to assure that it's effective and not abusive.
Siegel has lobbied the New York Legislature, without success, to establish guidelines requiring:
 All video surveillance to be listed on a public register.
 Warning signs in every surveillance zone.
 Strict limits on access to and distribution of surveillance tapes.
 Tapes archived for a limited time - and their quality standardized to ensure they can be viewed.
"Americans should be alarmed at the growth of surveillance in society without even minimal standards or regulation," Siegel says.
The Postal Service makes extensive use of video surveillance at its 40,000 facilities. But there are no standards of use and operation, says Dan Mihalko of the Postal Inspectors office. "We call them 'hold-up cameras.' We don't think of them as surveillance."
Yet, in September, one of those cameras recorded Austin office worker Juanita Yvette Lozano mailing a package. That camera placed her at the center of a major presidential campaign scandal. Based on that tape, Lozano, who works for George W. Bush media consultant Mark McKinnon, was suspected of mailing a package containing political briefing papers to a Gore campaign figure.
While neither the FBI nor Lozano's attorneys will discuss the case, McKinnon insists the package contained a pair of slacks he was returning to The Gap. The matter remains under investigation.
"Face it, you give up a lot of privacy to engage in today's society," says Mary Culnan, professor of management and information technology at Bentley College, in Waltham, Mass.
Minimizing intrusions
"Move that camera," snaps "Big Sister" McWhirt as one of the multiple images on the 25-by-10-foot projection wall in the Virginia traffic center reveals a camera under a trainee's control swinging dangerously close to viewing homes lining the highway.
McWhirt says they do what they can to minimize intrusiveness. They are prohibited from videotaping, unless asked to by state police for investigative purposes. They do not report what they see unless it is to assist motorists or to help police. They do not, for example, alert police when drivers' traffic speeds exceed limits. And they never zoom in closer than necessary.
"Once we have determined what's going on at, say, an accident scene, we pull back and try to act responsibly," she says. "These images are fed live to TV; we don't want a gruesome accident appearing on television."
Anyone who wants to check can go to www.highwaynet.com to watch the live Webcast, alternating among 25 cameras. "If they were fixed so we couldn't move (our view) up and down the interstates, we would be negligent in our coverage," she says. "No matter what we do, there's going to be some criticism."
Ubiquity is snoopers' watchword
Still cameras, phones and videotape provide a nearly indelible map of Americans' daily lives. Some of the surveillance that we regularly encounter:
ATMs
More than 250,000 automated teller machines snap tens of millions of photos every day of banking transactions, as well as people in the background.
Surveillance cameras
A million closed-circuit cameras, most with videotape recorders, are used by the private sector - in offices, apartment buildings, garages, stores, banks and restaurants. Many capture random street action.
Federal, state and local governments
Use many cameras with an unknown number snapping photos, shooting videos or watching live action on highways, in tollbooths, at intersections, and in government buildings, train stations, airports and post offices.
Telephones
May capture activities even without a wiretap. Every call to an 800-, 888- or 900-number records your phone number.
E-mail and voicemail
Unless your boss has told you otherwise, your employer has the right to examine messages left at your workstation. However, while your employer is required to warn you if he eavesdrops on phone conversations, he can peer over your shoulder (with a hidden camera or using technology) to read your every keystroke.
Credit cards and other ID cards
Carry black magnetic strips that when "swiped" through a "reader" at a store, gas pump, office door or parking garage security gate record the date, time and location the card was used.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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